The Bing Finance app allows users to follow global market indices and currency data and create a watchlist of their favorite stocks backed by Morningstar data, directly from the Start screen of Windows 8. In addition, investors can use the "Movers" panel within the app to track the day's top gaining, losing, and most-active stocks. Clicking on an index or stock brings up performance charts and deeper data.

"We are tremendously honored that Microsoft selected Morningstar to provide the investment data for Windows 8," said Kunal Kapoor, president, data division, for Morningstar. "The prominence of the Bing Finance app in Windows 8 combined with our independent data will allow millions of investors access to information that will help them meet their financial goals."

For individual equities, Windows 8 users will be able to access a wide variety of Morningstar stock data through the Bing Finance app in 107 languages, from top-line general measures like market cap, trading volume, price range, and competitors; to more granular data such as debt-to-equity ratio, forward price-to-earnings ratio, and return on assets. Investors can also pull up detailed charts showing revenue, profit, and cash reserve statistics. It also includes a table with the most-active mutual funds trading in each security, including the renowned Morningstar Rating for each fund listed. Users can sign up for Premium content from Morningstar.com, the company's individual investor website, which provides analysis of a stock through a link at the bottom of each Bing Finance stock page.

The Bing Finance app comes pre-loaded on Windows 8 and enables users to pin an individual security or index to their Start screen that is dynamically updated.